Many millions of crayons and other similar articles are sold throughout the world by different vendors in competition with each other. Increases in the number of articles which are to be produced per minute, reduction in costs, and increased efficiency are necessary and desirable in this competitive global market.
Crayons are typically made from a soft material such as parafin wax, which is impermeable to moisture but sometimes difficult to wrap with a label because the crayon's surface is slick, making adhesive adherence difficult. Also, crayons and other similar articles are sometimes tapered about 0.005 to 0.010 inches over their two to four inch length. This taper makes application of a label to the crayon even more difficult because the label ends often will not align together due to the taper.
In one prior art method, a precut label having an inexpensive flour based adhesive on one side thereof is placed over a slot. The crayon is laid on the label and pushed into the slot. The label is bent around the crayon and then the crayon is rolled at least about one revolution to wrap the label about the crayon. The crayon and moist adhesive must then be allowed to dry. Typically, the machines used for labelling these crayons in accordance with this prior art method produce about 180 crayons a minute.
Because of increased competition and the concomitant necessity to increase production and reduce costs, it is desirable to increase labeling speeds of crayons and other similar articles to at least about 500 to 600 pieces per minute. Glue-solvent technology offers some possibilities for increasing labelling speeds. However, this technology is not as desirable because the solvents used in such large production runs are environmentally undesirable and may not work with wax-like crayons and other similar articles where a large adhesive label surface is required.